What happens if autovacuum is disabled in PostgreSQL? What problems can arise?

Disabling autovacuum in PostgreSQL leads to the accumulation of "dead" tuples, which remain after updates and deletes. This causes several problems:

• Increase in table and index size: without cleanup, the database will occupy more and more space.
• Performance degradation: queries will run slower due to the need to scan a large amount of outdated data.
• Locks and transaction conflicts: vacuum helps free space and prevent locks.
• Data visibility issues: old transactions may see outdated data.

Ultimately, disabling autovacuum requires manual running of VACUUM and ANALYZE, which is inconvenient and risky. Usually, autovacuum is configured rather than completely disabled.